College president Sharon Hirsh says Rosemont's current "sticker price" is inflated, like it is at almost every other college. Because of scholarships and grants, a vast majority of students pay less than the school's listed tuition.

"The current college financing model is broken," said Hirsh. "A lot of families are completely confused by this whole arrangement. For that reason they think that the actual sticker price is the price that they'd have to pay," she said.

The motivation behind the announcement is not to increase enrollment, Hirsh said. The college isn't in financial trouble and has a $17 million endowment.

She hopes the new base tuition will attract potential students who may have overlooked the college because they thought it was too expensive.

Rosemont has about 1,100 students, about half of whom are undergraduates. Once a women-only college, it became co-ed in 2009. It also began offering some online graduate degrees at that time.

In the past three years, more than a dozen colleges have made similar cuts. Utica College, a small private school in New York, announced earlier this week that it is reducing tuition by 42%, to just below $20,000.